REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft is calling on Congress to regulate the use of facial recognition technology to protect people’s privacy and freedom of expression.

It’s the first big tech company to raise serious alarms about an increasingly sought-after technology for recognizing a person’s face from a photo or through a camera.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a blog post Friday that the government should form a bipartisan expert commission.

Many uses of facial recognition technology are "positive and potentially even profound," Smith said. "But other potential applications are more sobering. Imagine a government tracking everywhere you walked over the past month without your permission or knowledge. ... This has long been the stuff of science fiction and popular movies – like “Minority Report,” “Enemy of the State” and even “1984” – but now it’s on the verge of becoming possible," he said in the blog post.

Smith says Microsoft, which supplies face recognition to some businesses, has already rejected some customers’ requests to deploy the technology in situations involving “human rights risks.”

A Microsoft spokeswoman declined to provide more details about what opportunities the company has passed over because of ethical concerns.